Here, to help you evaluate that claim, are 32 short stories about in-custody deaths or near-deaths in America.

These stories don’t mention Jeffrey Epstein, but they are about him. Epstein was incarcerated in the United States of America, and this is how the United States of America, the mightiest and richest nation there is or ever has been, treats incarcerated people. When you say, “There is no way that guards could be so reckless, so indifferent, so malicious as to just let someone as important as Epstein die,” this is how 32 Americans respond. Many, many more could respond in kind.

Andrew Holland died in a restraint chair in San Luis Obispo County, California. He was strapped to the chair, naked, for two days. If you like, you can watch video of the guards laughing as medics try fruitlessly to perform CPR, though I would not recommend it.

The story of Shamieke Pugh and Maurice Lee has laughter, too, but I don’t think it’s funny. Maybe I’m humorless? Pugh and Lee were African American, and they were handcuffed, helpless, to a jail table when they were stabbed by a white supremacist. The guards laughed.

Darren Rainey was an inmate in South Florida. Guards put him in a shower stall, locked the door, and turned on the hot water. Then they taunted him, saying, “How do you like your shower?” He died. Though witnesses said he looked like a boiled lobster, authorities declined to charge the guards. They said the skin peeling off Rainey’s body must have been “slippage” caused by attempts to revive him.

Daniel Chong didn’t die—but he very nearly did. In 2012, the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested him at a friend’s house when it conducted a raid targeting Ecstasy distribution. DEA agents locked him in a cell, forgot about him, and left him there for five days. He drank his own urine, attempted suicide, and wrote a goodbye note to his mother before they found him.

Bryan Perry had a Purple Heart from his service in Iraq. He survived the war, but he didn’t survive the jail in Clackamas County, Oregon. His jailers laughed and joked as he died of a drug overdose, and took cellphone video. “We should go show this to his girlfriend and be like, ‘You love this?’” one of them says.

Lamekia Dockery told staff at an Indiana work-release facility that she was having severe stomach pain and needed to go to a hospital. A guard recorded the response: “I advised her to stop over-talking me.” Dockery had been vomiting repeatedly and couldn’t eat, but guards decided she was malingering. She died of sepsis.

Joseph Arquillo died of an overdose in the Cuyahoga County Jail in Ohio. On video, you can see him lying still on a mat for about an hour. A guard checked on him by walking up and kicking his mat, and then walked away. That didn’t work. He died.

Timothy Souders died in the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in 2006. He died of dehydration, chained to a concrete slab, on surveillance video.

Chris Howard was arrested when he failed a drug test—he had eaten a marijuana cookie—while on probation for drunk driving. When he had a seizure, Gwinnett County, Georgia, jail guards decided he was being “aggressive” and put him in a restraint chair, where he died without medical attention.

Allen Capers died in 2017 in South Carolina. After another inmate stabbed him repeatedly during a riot, guards dragged him into the prison yard and left him there. As he bled out, guards repeatedly walked about, looked at him, and walked away. The whole thing happened on camera.

Jennifer Lobato was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting about $57 worth of merchandise from an Old Navy in Jefferson County, Colorado. She told jail staff that she was in withdrawal from opioids. “That’s why you shouldn’t do drugs,” a deputy said. She asked for medical care but didn’t get it, and died from vomiting so much that it caused cardiac arrest.

Cristobal Solano was arrested for disturbing the peace outside the Key Lodge Motel in Tustin, California. When he resisted a search of his mouth, at least seven guards piled on him, pushed his face into a concrete bunk, kneed him in the back, and sat on him as he screamed “Please, I can’t breathe!” He couldn’t, and he died.

Andrew Arevalo and Carlos Perez were in High Desert State Prison in Nevada when they got into a fight. They were both in underwear with their hands restrained behind their back, so it was mostly some shuffling and shin kicking. A guard shot them with a 12-gauge shotgun. Perez died. Arevalo was put in solitary confinement for 18 months on the theory that he was at fault for Perez’s death.

Michael Tyree, a bipolar 31-year-old, was beaten to death by three Santa Clara County, California, jail guards. His spleen was split nearly in two by the beating.

Kelly Coltrain was stopped for speeding, arrested for unpaid parking tickets, and sent to the Mineral County Jail in Nevada. She was withdrawing from drugs, and told the guards that she needed medical attention. The guards gave her a mop to clean her own vomit. She had a seizure and died, and lay dead for six hours before guards—who under jail regulations were supposed to check on her every half hour—discovered her.

Henry Clay Stewart Jr., 60, was in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Virginia on a probation violation from a shoplifting charge arising from stealing $9.99 worth of beer. He began coughing up blood and complaining of pain, and begged for medical treatment. The jail said it wasn’t a medical emergency. It was wrong, and Stewart—who was bleeding from a perforated stomach ulcer—died.

Not everyone in custody in America dies, of course. Some survive. Randy Miller was arrested, drunk, for trespassing at a convenience store in Sarasota, Florida. As he was booked at a local jail, one of the arresting officers threw peanuts on the ground and ordered Miller to eat them. Miller, who was homeless, intoxicated, and handcuffed, groveled on the ground for his peanuts. Guards looked on and laughed as the officer kicked the peanuts for Miller to retrieve.

These stories don’t mention Jeffrey Epstein, but they are about him.

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Ken White is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, an attorney at Brown White & Osborn LLP in Los Angeles, and a former federal prosecutor. He practices First Amendment law, civil litigation, and criminal defense.